Dance With My Father
by Queequg471
Summary: I'd play a song that would never, ever end, how I'd love to dance with my father again." Brennan and Booth's dance, told through the eyes of their daughter Cassie.


**A/N: This idea came to me when I was listening to the song Dance With My Father by Kellie Coffey. I recommend listening to it when reading this story, it's a great song. My dad and I never danced, but we do have this one conversation that we repeat to each other over and over, which we've done for what I guess is the past twelve years. I have two sisters, but this is just my dad and my thing.**

**This is my first songfic, and it may be just my bleary-eyed 2:30 am thinking, but I'm actually quite happy with how it turned out. Please read, and enjoy!**

Ever since I was little, I've studied people. People and relationships, to each other and to others. Dad said I get it from my mom. The Squinty Instinct, he called it. Sometimes I sit for hours, just watching.

Clenched hands and overly patient voices mean trouble on the horizon. Yelling, despite its obvious connotations, is actually an effort to let the problem be known and dealt with – then kicked right in the ass. Lazy, occasional smiles mean old, practiced love. Stealing glances, straightness of the back, new love, unsure love.

The desire to sit, the desire to just watch life in motion, it's an instinct of mine.

One of us had to have it. My brother doesn't. He thinks with his heart, not his head, rushing with reckless abandon into everything he does. Sports, dating, just his life in general, Isaac takes the fast way out. I heard my mom once call that the Booth Instinct, then my father's quiet laugh.

"Brain and heart, Bones."

I begged them to tell me what that means, but they refused time and time again. Just looked at each other, sharing a look like I've suddenly disappeared, like they are the only two people in the room.

Their relationship was the one that set it off, I guess. When I was little, I didn't understand how two people who seemed to be arguing every second sentence could look so happy together. Still do, I suppose. They weren't ever an overly affectionate couple, and sometimes I'd even catch some of my friends casting me and Isaac pitying look after witnessing another one of their passionate arguments.

"People who love each other don't fight." They'd tell me, and I'd tell them with the fiery passion that my mother passed on that they were wrong, thank you very much.

It never bothered me, seeing them fight. It should have, but I knew what was there, and even in my six-year-old mind, I knew real love when I saw it.

_Back when I was a child,  
Before life removed all the innocence,_

I still remember the first time I sat down to just observe my parents. I was four years old. Isaac wasn't born yet, and I was reveling in the attention that came from being an only child. As I sat down to eat my dinner, I watched my parents fight over another one of their "grown-up jobs."

"So she deserved to go to jail, then? The primal instinct of protecting her own life when it was threatened means she should be persecuted?"

"She _had_ other options, Bones! She should have left when he first started hitting her, she should have gone to the cops!"

"She was _scared_, Booth! He controlled every aspect of her life, was she supposed to think that he would simply help her pack and wish her well?"

"Well she damn well could have done better then shooting him while he slept! If she knew he was asleep, why didn't she just leave then?"

"Is that what _your _mother did, Booth? After your father started hitting her? Or was she too scared too?"

I heard my father's sharp intake of breath. There was a long pause, two bright spots coloring my father's cheeks.

"Wow. I can't believe you'd do that, Bones. I can't believe you'd go there."

Dad stormed out of the kitchen, into the living room, where he flopped down in his favorite chair and turned on the radio, resolutely ignoring my mother standing in the doorway with regret written all over her face. It wasn't uncommon for my parent's arguments to lead where it hurt for both of them, but this must have been the first time my Grandpa Booth, who I had never met, had been brought into the mix.

My mother slowly made her way into the living room towards Dad, throwing a "Cassie, eat up, Mama will be right back," towards me. I saw her sit down on the edge of Dad's chair and lean to whisper into his ear. I slid out of my chair and crept down to the doorway, watching them.

After a few minutes, Dad stood, his face softening and his eyes returning to how he usually looked at Mom. He turned the radio up with a flick of his wrist and held his arm out to Mom.

"Dance with me, Bones."

_My father would lift me high,  
And dance with my momma and me,  
_

My mother gave a disbelieving snort, but took his hand anyway, allowing him to pull her into his arms. She looped her arms around his neck and laid her head on his shoulder, and they swayed to a soft country tune, although I'm sure the song didn't matter. They never moved from that position as I watched them, but to me, it always looked like they were one person, one mind and one heart.

I'm not sure how long I watched them sway together, lost in each other, but eventually, I felt my Dad pull me into the circle. He and Mom wrapped their arms around me too, sandwiching me in between them. I lay back against my mother, eventually falling asleep in the soothing motion of the dance and the love surrounding the little circle of our family.

_Then up the stairs, he would carry me.  
And I knew for sure I was loved._

After that, I'd see them dancing every Sunday night. It was usually after I went to bed, but I learned to pretend I was asleep so my father would leave and I could hear the music, before I'd sneak downstairs to watch them. It was a different song every time, but the music had become a secondary character to them. It was almost like this end of week tradition had become a necessary integration of their souls to my parents, and I didn't dare interrupt them these nights. Some things are just too private, I knew even at four years old. I'd sneak back to bed after watching them, and I don't think they ever knew I was there, but I doubt they could have noticed. For them, only each other mattered for those few minutes, and I have no doubt that is one of the things that made their marriage last as long as it did.

I don't remember ever mentioning witnessing this to my Dad, but I must have sometime along the way, because he started dancing with me. Not Sunday nights of course, never Sunday nights. But despite my similarities to my mother, I was a Daddy's girl through and through. As a child, all I knew of my father's job was that he helped keep people safe by putting people who had done bad things in jail. It scared me more than a bit when I did something wrong, and my parents had to calm me down on several occasions to assure me that I wouldn't go to jail for not tidying my toys, but I was infinitely proud of my father. He was the world's hero to me, and when I was his special little girl, I felt as if I was floating.

So when he started taking the time to dance with me, I felt so important, so special, that I barely cared that I wasn't part of the sacred tradition that was Sunday nights.

Once every Wednesday, my dad would randomly turn on the radio and bow down to me.

"May I have this dance, Princess?"

And from wherever I was, I would run into his arms and he would swing me around to the beat of the song. Sometimes he'd whip me around to a fast beat until I whooped and hollered; sometimes he'd lay my head on his shoulder and rock with me as if I were made of glass.

Whatever night it was, it happened. Without fail it happened, straight through my childhood, through Isaac's birth and babyhood and into my teenage years. However uncool my parents would seem to me, there we were, every Wednesday night, me swaying in my father's arms with my mother watching in the doorway, a soft smile on her face.

And every week, I'd still sneak down to watch Mom and Dad on Sunday nights, their special dance like nothing I had ever seen before.

I know, without question, that this is what I miss most. Nothing else even comes to mind. In the lost blur of memories stemming from childhood, these are the moments I play over and over, trying to convince myself it will be enough to sustain me in the years to come.

_If I could get another chance,  
Another walk, another dance with him.  
I'd play a song that would never, ever end.  
How I'd love, love, love to dance with my father again._

It happened on a Wednesday. Dad had gone to work, same as every day, Mom had gone to drop Isaac off at school and then go to work herself. I was just getting ready for a shift at the restaurant where I worked, when the phone rang. I picked it up, figuring it was a sales call and I'd blow off the guy as soon as possible. The boss was going to ream me out for being late again, and I couldn't afford to lose this job.

The only thing I dimly recall about the phone call is a strident male voice asking to talk to my mother. I'm honestly not sure how I managed to force my shaking fingers to dial her number, much less tell her to come home. But the next thing I knew, she was there, and taking the phone from me.

The expression on her face was like nothing I'd ever seen before. It scared me so much, all I could do was hold onto Isaac, who by that time was crying in confusion, for once ignoring his fifteen-year-old boy pride.

It was a drug bust, they told us. They were armed, and they opened fire. My mother said years later that she couldn't count the number of drug busts my father had been on, and I couldn't understand why this one was any different.

But it was.

One single bullet, they told us. It would have been quick. Painless. One single second, and our family shattered into too many pieces to ever pick up.

And it was a Wednesday. A _Wednesday_. The day we danced. I actually went over to the radio and turned it on out of instinct. Before I could stop myself, I found myself calling for my dad to come dance, because how could he forget? It was our day, he _always _remembered.

The wave of pain that hit me in that one single moment stopped me dead in my tracks.

There would be no more Wednesday night dances.

It hit me harder than anything. Harder than him never being here to see me graduate from university, to get married, to have my first child. No, he'd never be here to dance with me. Not ever again. It was a Wednesday, and instead of lying safe in my Daddy's arms, we went to the hospital to identify his body.

_If I could steal one final glance,  
One final step, one final dance with him,  
I'd play a song that would never, ever end.  
How I'd love, love, love to dance with my father again._

I wish I could say our family knitted back together. I really do, because that's what Dad would have wanted. But if I'm completely honest with myself, we never really got back to that place. I started going out every night. I found ways to numb the pain, ways I wish I hadn't.

Isaac stopped playing sports, what used to be so important to him, and we could never coax him to rejoin. His ambition now is to be an FBI agent.

"I think Dad would like that," I whispered to him, softly but Mom still heard, and it caused her to fly out of the room.

If any of us took it hard, Mom took it the hardest. The first few weeks, we stayed with Aunt Angela, because Mom wouldn't come out of her room, not even to make us something to eat. She saw him everywhere. Nowhere was safe from him, not even the lab, her personal sanctuary. She'll deny it to this day, but I know she could barely look at us, not when she saw so much of him in us.

She works again now. She takes care of us. She's still Mom, yelling at us when we get bad grades, stay out too late, miss curfew, things like that. She comes to our events; she goes to Isaac's school functions. She's proud of us, she loves us, and we know it.

But sometimes at night, when Isaac's asleep, I walk past her room and I hear her heaving sobs. Once, about a year after Dad died, I looked in the door a crack, and I saw her curled on her bed, holding Dad's St. Christopher medal and sobbing as if her heart was actually breaking. I didn't dare go in, but I stood there until I heard her sobs subside and her breathing even out. I waited until I knew she was resting in relative peace, and judging by her small smile, seeing a face she only saw in sleep, before crawling into my own bed. And as I fell asleep, I swore I could almost feel his hand brush over my hair.

Maybe it was just a breeze.

But just for now, it was enough for me.

_Sometimes I'd listen outside her door,  
And I'd hear how my Momma cried for him.  
I'd pray for her even more than me.  
I'd pray for her even more than me._

_**Epilogue:**_

Every Sunday night, my Mom goes down into the living room. It's late, and she thinks both of us are asleep, but this is a tradition I'm not really willing to give up any more than she is.

She turns on the radio and curls in to a chair, knees pushed into her chest. As if he's still here, she rocks back and forth, again and again, the tears curling down her cheeks. It's the only time nowadays she'll allow herself to break down where she knows she could be caught. But as she cries, I watch her eyes carry a small spark. It's as if she knows he's there, because it's where she feels close to him, the time where he's still here, and he loves her and he'll never leave her, not completely.

It's these times where I wish with more passion than ever that Dad could be back with us, if only for a few minutes. He's the only one she wants to see in times like this, and as much as I so desperately want to give her what she wants, I know I can't.

_"I know I'm praying for much too much,  
"But could you send back the only man she loved.  
"I know you don't do it usually,  
"But, dear Lord, she's dyin' to dance with my father again."_

I don't ever expect her to find someone else, because Dad was her one. We can really only expect one in a lifetime, and some of us don't even get that. My mom got her one, and however cruelly he was ripped away from her, in some way, she'd made peace with the fact that he'll always be there. Sunday nights, they have their moment, and that is something that not even death can take away from them.

Most of us don't get to find the one with whom you can share the most important dances of your life, some have even lost faith that kind of love is out there. They're wrong. It's there, I know because I've seen it. I've seen the dance firsthand, reaching hand in hand, soul to soul and heart to heart.

**A/N#2: I would sincerely appreciate some reviews, as this is not my normal type of fic. Thanks all!**


End file.
